Network Camera is a standalone video device to capture and transfer live video for the surveillance purpose. No computer required at all. It is great to use in environment without attendant.

There are lot of brand, model and manufactures for you to shop around, but ask yourself the following questions before you make a decision which one you will go with.

1. How broad is your bandwidth? The throughput of your internet connection set how fast you can upload video. More usage of bandwidth means more traffic, which means you probably need pay more.
2. How live you need your video? More frame rate for your camera, better video you get. The real time video need 25 frames/second. It is great bandwidth eater for live video via internet, especially if you monitor your home through ADSL which means upload is much slower than down load. All your live video is using up bandwidth. Typically to say, you won’t get 25f/s rate in an ADSL connection.
3. How real time you need for home video monitoring? Delay is almost guaranteed for a self home monitoring via internet, but products from different manufactures differ in delay. Set a typical application environment and compare products.
4. How early you need the monitoring system to record? Generally to say, network camera emphases on remote monitor and pay less attention to record. It acts very well for viewing snapshot on demand, but only upload snapshot or video to server under specific situation, such as motion detected, or IR sensor triggered. All those happen after the event triggered. Only a couple of Network camera can record and upload snapshots prior to the event triggers. It is great feature to let you know the context of the snapshots.
5. How large you need the live video. Large video file means huge resolution, mean detailed image, of course, means more bandwidth.
6. How smart you need the video being compressed. There are a couple of standards applied in today’s market, such as MJPEG, MJPEG-1,MJPEG-4 and H.264. Find the advantages of them here:

·        MJPEG is evolved from JPEG, which uses inner frames compression algorithm. Less compression rate, large video size. Video quality is good. But not good for long haul recording and not good to monitor complex and fast changing settings.

·        MPEG-1 is based on frame forecast algorithm. High compression rate and small video can be produced by combining and compressing related frame. Not good candidate for real time video.

·        H.264 is latest video compression technology which uses block oriented motion estimation based   algorithm to achieve most efficient compression.

1. How many channels you need to monitor? Most IP Camera only support one channel video input, but some IP Video servers declare supporting 4,8 up to 32 channel. If you need more channel, you need consider IP Video server. Another parameter to consider is dedicated multi channel or shared multi channel. Shared multi channel is to support multi channel input but only one channel can be monitored in a given time. All input channel is manually switched or auto-switcher to share the only one video processor.

As soon as you get your network camera, please consider our free home monitoring from cell phone service.